Thursday 30 October 2008

Desperate Housewives – Season 3 (The dirty laundry edition)

Interesting show as mentioned for the previous seasons. However, this season disappoints compared to the previous two. It picked up during the second half, and had a nice ending. All in all, it was an interesting watching experience.

I didn’t understood the meaning behind its tagline; The dirty laundry edition. As I understood, there wasn’t anything particular connected with laundry and neither was it extraordinary dirty.

Rating: 5 of 6

Monday 27 October 2008

Varg Veum – Tornerose (Sleeping Beauty)

The second movie in the series of Norwegian west-coast novel hero; Varg Veum. The movie has great production values just like the previous one and an interesting plot. Bjørn Floberg is just great in his role.

Rating: 5 of 6

Karzzzz

This is the boring remake of the hit movie Karz which came in 1980. The remake isn’t that successful as several other remakes in these days. To most extent, the story is loyal to original one, but there are rumours that the remake has included a twist. Honestly, I didn’t noticed this so-called twist, so you shouldn’t expect something spectacular as in the ending of Don – The chase begin again. The execution is of the climax is too filmy and unrealistic; thumbs down.

Lastly, there are too many songs in the movie! Sometimes, you’ll get a songs smashed up at screen right after about 5-8 minutes since the last one. This is too much.

The movie has nothing extraordinary to offer, so I would rather recommend to watch the original Karz (again) instead of this remake.

Rating: 3/2 of 6

Shoot on Sight

Just another movie about the hot topic of terrorism. This time, the story is set in a British atmosphere with references to the London attack July 2005. We meet an upcoming Muslim and Pakistani police officer at Scotland Yard, who got challenged to face potential terrorists among his associates and friends.

The movie deals with several interesting themes, which are related to the movie’s tagline; “Is It A Crime To Be A Muslim?” which is one of the advantages of the movie. Unfortunately, the makers fell into the trap of the making relatively uninspiring. In addition, the climax is indicated too early in the story, which also makes the movie uneventful.

Rating: 4 of 6

Die Another Day

Guys, I’ve bought the tickets for the upcoming premiere of the latest James Bond movie; Quantum of Solace. In order to warm up to watch it, it’s time to refresh with the last James Bond movies.

After watching the superb Casino Royale, Die Another Day seems like an uninspiring orgy of special effects and cool gadgets with typical James Bond clichés. The story is relatively thin, and you know what you are going to experience. It was just in time to refresh the whole concept of James Bond which happened with Casino Royale. The previous movies tend to be too similar to each other.

Rating: 4 of 6

Wednesday 22 October 2008

Dan Brown: Iskaldt Bedrag (Deception Point)

This is Dan Brown’s second last novel, and was released in 2001 (before The Da Vinci Code). You’ll easily notice his writing techniques in this novel as well, but this time the story isn’t that exciting as in his earlier books. It seems like that the 570 pages are unnecessary, and the novel could be shorter. In addition, the author fell into the trap of using some clichés in the writing. This doesn’t make the novel that inspiring.

Otherwise, the political environment in Washington DC is described well.

Rating: 4 of 6

Monday 20 October 2008

Varg Veum - Bitre Blomster / Bitter Flowers

This movie is the first movie in the movie series of Varg Veum. The movie is a thriller, and has an exceptional atmosphere by the use of the visuals.

Norwegian movies tend not to use much background music, but this movie is happily an exception. It has a cool background score throughout the movie to give an intense feeling. Maybe, it was too much of this kind of music, but still it’s a step in a right direction. Movies without music are boring.

Rating; 4/5 of 6

Cassandra’s Dream

Nice thriller from Woody Allen.

Rating: 4/5 of 6

Ramchand Pakistani

Ramchand Pakistani is a great artistic Pakistani movie. The story is derived from a true story, where a child accidentally crosses the border to India from Pakistan. His father also follows him in order to find him, and both of them are held by the authorities at LoC and put into jail. The movie gives a brilliant description of the prison life, and this absurd situation. The acting performances are also good.

Rating: 5 of 6

Hello

Boring movie, which is based on a book called “One Night at the Call Center” and which was very popular in India. The story is simply non-inspiring, and the only advantage of the whole movie is the remix version of the song “Hello”.

Rating: 2 of 6

Monday 13 October 2008

De Usynlige

Jeg synes denne filmen er overhypet. Den er bra laget, temaet er spennende og skuespillerprestasjonen er veldig bra. Likevel er ikke dette den beste filmen jeg har sett. I tillegg er det dårlig bildekvalitet hvor den er kornete, ikke bra.

Det er en karakter i filmen som er dansk, og produsentene har ikke tatt seg bryet med å oversette dansken. Det blir ikke akkurat optimal filmopplevelse når man ikke forstår hva som blir sagt siden det er på annet språk (dansk).

Terningkast: 3

Music and Lyrics

Disappointing romantic comedy with Hugh Grant. He has previously given several good movies, and this one disappoints, but still has some comic moments.

Rating: 3 of 6

Drona

Average science fiction movie, which went too slowly at some places and had rare background score. The lightening point was Kay Kay Menon’s interpretation of his role.

Rating: 3/4 of 6

Kidnap

Time pass thriller with Imran Khan and Sunjay Dutt. Imran has given an all right and good performance, and there are some cool stunts. On the other hand, it has uninspiring music.

Rating: 3 of 6

Firewall

Average thriller with Harrison Ford.

Rating: 4/3 of 6

Friday 10 October 2008

Frihetens Regn / The Shawshank Redemption

Good classical movie from 1994, which I haven’t watched until now. According to imdb.com, this movie is regarded as second best movie ever.

Rating: 5 of 6

Eklavya

Sometimes, you get surprised by how good a movie can be. But when you watch it for the second time, the experience will not be the same as for the first time. This is also the case for Eklavya. The movie was wonderful when I watched for the first time, and is still good, but the experience wasn’t exactly the same.

Rating: 5 of 6

Rock On!!

All right and time pass musical drama. It deals around a rock band, who falls apart, and several years later, they try start it again.

Farhan Akhtar, who has made several good movies earlier (Don and Dil Chahta Hai) has made debut as an actor in this movie.

Rating: 3 of 6

Welcome to Sajjanpur

A funny movie with horrible songs. The movie describes the poor county life, and also deals with some serious issues. It has a nice balance of both humour and seriousness.

Rating: 4/5 of 6

Thursday 2 October 2008

The Prestige

Christopher Nolan has given us several remarkable movies, (i.e. Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight), and this movie is also simply amazing. As he said in the Making of the Prestige-material, he has made this movie to show how storytelling techniques can help to give the public a wonderful experience. The screenplay in this movie is structured so well, and you get the right piece of information at the right time in order to give you a magical experience. Ironically, the story deals around magicians and how their performances were/are structured to give the public an exciting experience. Such a performance consists of following three parts;

The pledge
The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't.

The turn
The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."

The prestige
So what’s The Prestige? The Prestige is the climax to every magic trick - traditionally the re-appearrance of the magician after he had dissapeared.

The movie is also structured just like such a great magical trick. First you’ll see what happens in the movie and get indicative ending. But that wasn’t the ending anyway, and you’ll experience the prestige to get the overwhelming experience.

The movie is simply a piece of art work.

Rating: 5 of 6